Remember Kosovo and the rest of the stricken Balkans? Remember the Kurds in northern Iraq? What moving dispatches those crises generated in the west, together with such damnation for their tormentors. According to my memory, they were each called "the most moral cause of our generation." There was no question, said the crusaders, of right and wrong; they were firmly on the side of right, along with Blair and Clinton and their generals. How silent are these crusaders now, their selective compassion reserved demonstrably for causes of state, "our" causes.

Before our eyes, the Israeli regime (it is never called a regime, of course), armed and bankrolled by the United States, and backed by Britain, is set upon destroying an entire country, deliberately killing civilians, almost half of whom are children; and the crusaders are as quiet as mice or they are busy toiling in the great quarry of obsfucation.

I spotted one of them yesterday contributing to a report about Condaleeza Rice - the modern Ribbentrop - in which she was said to have "embarked on a mission to the Middle East to stitch together a peace plan". I read that twice and asked myself how was it was possible for Rice (or "Condi") to achieve her "mission" when the unabashed mission of her government was to aggressively back and collude with the Israelis, even supplying them in mid-slaughter with precision guided bombs and uranium tipped missiles? The former crusader did not say.

I spotted another crusader seriously debating whether the Israeli army was still a "moral army". I read that one twice. In my experience of war and the Middle East, the Israeli army is one of the most craven. Every day, its soldiers humiliate defenceless, frightened old people and pregnant women at roadblocks and now its F-16 pilots drop phosphorous bombs on families fleeing in rickety vans.

The Israeli Justice minister, Haim Ramon, has said that Israel has "in effect obtained the authorisation to continue our operations" by the Rome conference on July 16. Previously, Blair and Bush has "dissuaded" the G8 meeting to call for a ceasefire. What this means is quite simple. In 1982, the great powers stood by while the Israelis oversaw the massacre of thousands in the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Chantila, in southern Lebanon. The same great powers are now saying: "Go ahead, kill and massacre until you are sated. We'll tell you to stop when we think that's enough."

In Vietnam long ago, in explaining why "we will win", a member of the National Liberation Front told me, "They (the Americans) can't kill us all." The invaders (the word was almost never used in the West) did their best and killed or caused the death of up to three million people. The invaders decimated the resistance in South Vietnam, the NLF, but they could not kill them all, and they were eventually driven out.

I am not drawing a precise parallel: suffice to say that the resistance in Lebanon, Hizbollah, are showing that they, too, operate by the same maxim. The resistance to rapacious power, to epic crimes of invasion (which the Nuremberg judges called the "paramount" crime) is humanity at its noblest; yet the paradox warns us that no resistance is pretty; that each adds its own form of violence in order to expel an invader (such as the civilians killed by Hizbollah rockets); and this has applied to heroic partisans in Europe and heroic Kurds and those faceless, despised Iraqis who have succeeded in pinning down the American homicidal machine in their country.

But there is hope. After all these years of terrorising an occupied people, eventually driving them to the despair of having to commit their own atrocities, the rogue regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv may, backed by Blair (whom history will judge both contemptible and a criminal), may, just may, have met their match. Or if not the whole match, the beginning of it.

In the meantime, the rest of us must demand that those claiming to hold responsible office in "civilised" governments break their cowardly silence and tell the invaders to stop their killing and to get out now.

John Pilger updated this blog at noon on July 28th. The headline has also been changed.